• How do you react to the two videos you’ve just seen? Which of the four people do you sympathise with? How would you have reacted if you had been each of the people who appear?
• Were there many discipline problems when you were at school? How did teachers punish bad behaviour? Were you well-behaved?
• What advice would you give teachers on how maintain authority and control in the classroom? What can teachers do to create a respectful classroom environment?
• Who is to blame for school failure: teachers, parents, pupils themselves, or is it caused by wider socio-economic problems?
• When you were at school was the relationship between teachers and students distant and formal, or open and friendly?
• What do you think it’s like to be a teacher in a modern-day secondary school? Do you think teaching is an easy job?
• Is there any difference between having a young, inexperienced teacher and having an older teacher with years of experience? Which do/did you prefer?
• When you were at school were there any rules that you thought were unnecessary, unfair or simply absurd? Did you obey these rules or did you break them?
• Do you think school students should be allowed to use their cellphones in class?
• Can you remember a teacher from your schooldays who made a big impact on you, either positive or negative?

Hey! Kids! Leave them teachers alone!

A : I think in theory teaching should be one of the most rewarding jobs around. You know, there can’t be many jobs more important and useful to society than educating future generations. However, I’m not sure whether all teachers would paint such a rosy picture of their jobs. I suspect many of them would say they’re overworked and underpaid. And when you think about it, life as a teacher must be pretty tough, especially teaching classes of, I don’t know, over 30 teenagers in an inner city secondary school. Apart from teaching, which is obviously the most important part of their job, teachers also have to deal with discipline problems, you know, bad behaviour and unruly students. They also have to satisfy the expectations of pushy parents, who think they know more about teaching than they do. And then there are the endless inspections from teams of school inspectors checking that standards are being maintained. It all must be really stressful. I also think it’s one of those professions in which it’s difficult to find, you know, the right work-life balance. Teachers often get accused of working short hours and having excessively long holidays. But of course, most people don’t realise how much work teachers actually do at home, you know, there’s marking, report-writing, course planning. People just don’t seem to takeall this work into account. It’s just not fair.

B : Well, I think the best approach is probably to be firm but friendly. I think it’s  obviously important that teachers are able to maintain control in class and enforce rules. You know, to make it clear what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. If I were a teacher, I think I’d lay down the rules right at the beginning of the school year. Actually, I think there are some teachers who negotiate school rules with their students, and then they ask them to sign a sort of contract. The idea is that later in the year, if there’s any misbehaviour, students can be held accountable for breaking rules that they’d previously agreed to obey, which is probably more effective in the long run than punishing students for breaking the “teacher’s rules”. Of course, it’s also essential that teachers are consistent and fair when applying rules and setting limits. If you tell a pupil that they can’t chew gum in class one day, you can’t let other students get away with it the next day. If you’re not consistent and fair, you can end up with students who take everything as some kind of “personal attack”. You know, they think the teacher has singled them out for punishment or is picking onthem for some reason. This is when you can have problems with parents too. Anyway, as for being “friendly”, maybe that’s not the right word. Maybe I mean approachable. You know, somebody that the pupils feel will listen and take their opinions into consideration. Of course, I’m no expert, but I think that’s how I’d try to approach things if I was a teacher.

* Answers : Questions 3 and 6